Female firefighters at Pearl Harbor.

This ad appeared in the Straits Times of Singapore in 15 February 1909. So by the pulp era there would have been private eyes in Singapore for at least twenty years.

An excerpt from an article of the Japan Advertiser, 12 Jan. 1922, on female private detectives:

Extreme eagerness has been manifested by the modern young women of Japan in taking up the profession of the detective. The “Shritzu Tantei Sha,” a private detective bureau of Imairi-cho, Shiba-ku, is proud of having two able female detectives, Miss Yaeko Nakuhara and Miss Tsuruoko Sato, and on average two dozen young women apply to this bureau a month for employment. Most of them, though, fail to qualify through lack of will power, observation or ability to reason. [sic] The two successful ones are paid to possess all these qualitifications besides good looks and tact, and many difficult cases have been solved by them. Miss Nakahara said: “Recently I went into the home of a wealthy gentleman as a servant girl and removed a long-standing trouble by detecting the secret of the wife, who had deserted from the path of virtue.

That advertisement appeared in The Japan Advertiser of Tokyo, 20 October, 1921. As far as I can tell, the Iwai Agency existed in Tokyo since 1886, and I’ve found ads for it in various European papers of the 1910s and 1920s.

The “business connections in all the principal cities of the world” quite likely means that the Iwai Agency was just another unofficial branch of the Japanese intelligence service, who were, recall, extremely active in the United States, Europe, China and Russia from the turn of the 20th century.

Still…an actual, historical private detective agency in Tokyo, during the Meiji period? Private detectives walking the streets next to samurai? Japanese private detectives active into the 1920s, in fascist Japan? Something as inherently individualistic as a private detective, or something only slightly less individualistic as a private detective agency, operating in a communal society like Meiji Japan? 

From the Singapore Straits Times of 15 November 1918, an obituary of what I suspect is an all-too-typical mercenary and one-time Africa Hand of the pulp era:

A Brunswick telegram recently announced that Dr. Karl Peters, the African explorer, had died at Woltorf (Brunswich).

It is not too much to say that the German African colonies owed their existence to the work of Karl Peters. In East Africa he was the pioneer, the inventor of the scheme, the force which inspired its realisation. No man did so much as he to stimulate German greed for other districts of the continent, for, eminent as a filibuster, he had even greater talents for advertisement and propaganda adapted to the German temperament. It happens by an odd chance that the man’s career is as it were a distillation of the qualities which have made Germany’s colonial policy infamous. Be avowed, he boasted, that in dealing with African territory and its inhabitants he had no other motive than to extract the utmost possible profit. Take his own words as evidence: “The English Government,” he said, “pampers the blacks to such an extent as to make the country impossible for the whites…To me the most advantageous system seems to be the one in which the negro is forced, following the example laid down by Prussian military law, to devote some twelve years of his life to working for the Government. During this time he should receive food and shelter and a wage, say, about 2s. a month, like the Prussian soldier.” To obtain opportunities for this policy he employed in dealing with Europeans every artifice of treachery, and exhausted upon the native population the resources of a mind morbidly fertile in cruelty. With the evidence which later years have brought to light before us it cannot fairly be said that Peters was a more infamous scoundrel than some other German administrators in Africa, but his crimes were too disgusting for the saner section of German opinion, and following the majority of the Reichstag we may allow him a certain eminence in villainy. His character is not difficult to understand. What led him to his dubious fame was a ferocious pugnacity and driving power. He had the nature of one of the old buccaneers, complicated, so much the worse for him, by Prussian militarism, by sham philosophy, and, worst of all, by the economics of the alliance of Junker and industrial magnate which dominates modern Germany. He was a brave man and of tireless energy. He had a large endowment of cunning. But of power, of thought, foresight, or sure insight, in spite of some pretentious books and much posing, he showed no trace.

The Colonial Movement

Karl Peters was born at Nauhaus, in Hanover, in 1856, the son of a Lutheran pastor. “Clever, but headstrong and unruly,” was the verdict of his schoolmaster. He studied at Götingen, Tübingen, and Berlin, with some distinction, and a reputation for impetuosity. A visit to England, according to his own story, set him thinking of colonial expansion. He came back to Germany in 1884, when Kolonialsch wärmerei was the fashion. He founded the Gesellschaft fur Deutsche Kolonisation, with himself as the manager, and soon after set out for East Africa. He spent six weeks on the mainland, rushing from chieftain to chieftain, making treaties with them, and taking them under the protection of Germany. Germany, then guided by the sane statecraft of Bismarck, was not excessively grateful, but the treaties were at length ratified, and a protectorate proclaimed. Peters proceeded to organise and finance the German East Africa Company.

His next exploit was to lead an expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha, from which he promised his country, not only glory, but hard cash, in the shape of new colonies to exploit. When he arrived off the coast of East Africa Admiral Fremantle confiscated his firearms as contraband. Berlin, still Bismarckian, “refused all mediation and support.” Peters got together a force of Somalis, and plunged into the interior. What he understood by exploration is explained by a statement made by Scavenius, the Danish traveler:

In the year 1894 I undertook an expedition with three boats and eighteen blacks up the River Tana. A few years before, Dr. Peters had made practically the same journey, on the occasion of his well-known expedition in search of Emin Pasha. No Europeans had in the meantime been through this desolate region. When I had rowed some 200 kilometres up-stream the population began to retire. On every side I came across traces of war. In the neighborhood of Obangi I found eleven villages that had been destroyed by fire, and everywhere skeletons of men, women, and children, those of the women and children being especially numerous. It was almost impossible for me to procure the necessary rice for my people, for as soon as we approached the whole populace fled panic-stricken. The natives were terrified at my white face, for the last white man they had seen was Dr. Peters. 

By the time the expedition approached the Equatorial Province, Stanley had already relieved Emin, and therefore was subsequently vilified by Peters with every charge that a fertile invention could suggest. Peters turned off to Uganda, and tried to win it away from England, but on the news of an English expedition to arrest him he fled back to the coast. Bismarck’s attitude to these adventures was never in doubt. The English, he said, might hang Peters for all he cared. But by the time Peters reached Berlin Bismarck was in retirement, and the Kaiser had taken control. Peters became his hero, to be received in special audience and imperially thanked, honoured, and entertained. In 1891 he went back to Africa as Imperial High Commissioner of the Kilimanjaro district. Soon the whole region was in revolt, some of the German garrison were killed, and a compulsory evacuation of the whole area followed. An inquiry into Peters’ conduct by the Governor of the Province pronounced him “censurable but not criminal.”
 

Condemned and Acquitted

He came back to Germany in 1893, and posed as a martyr to political rancour. The hero of German colonisation, the champion of Pan-Germanism in action must be defended against the adherents of Bismarck, the anti-Colonial party, and the Social-Democrats. It is plain that a fight between the Pan Germans and the saner men in high places raged over the corpse of his reputation. He was given a good pension, he was offered an important post in East Africa. The wind changed and the Colonial Office held a new inquiry into his actions. But no report was published, and he saw himself again safe on the road to the highest place. Then the Centre party and the Socialists were mobilised against him, and Bebel delivered a smashing indictment before the Reichstag. The worst charges were briefly that Peters kept a harem of black women, that he hanged without trail a native boy whom he accused of intimacy with them, that he pursued women who had fled from him to their own tribes, and that one of them at least on recapture was flogged daily, put in chains, and on a second escape and recapture hanged. It is fair to say that the Reichstag was roused to clamorous indignation, but as the substance of the charges had long been known to everybody we may wonder why they were suddenly found so exciting. The result was that Peters was deprived of his commission for “misuse of official power.” As it was restored to him in 1906 there is no escape from the conclusion that whatever Socialists or Catholics may think the Government of Germany regarded Karl Peters as a fit and proper person to represent its colonial policy. As usual, no one can state the case against Germany with more force than her own rulers.

Of late years Peters sought fresh fame as an exponent of the wildest dreams of Pan-Germanism, crying aloud for the defeat of England “at the Suez Canal and in Egypt, and if possible in India.” To the last he was treated by all parties as a man whose opinions must be treated as significant and important, a curious commentary on the German capacity for political thought.

For a more objective treatment of Peters’ life, there’s a somewhat lengthy Wikipedia article). Setting aside the inevitable smugness at being Our Enlightened Selves, we can still feel loathing for Peters. Clearly, not a good person.

On the other hand…Peters died in September, 1918, and the obituary probably originally appeared in October, while World War One was still going on. In all likelihood a significant amount of the venom directed towards Peters comes from British jingoism rather than from a genuine loathing for what white colonialists did to Africans. That British colonial officers were only little better than the Germans is, we know now, a fact, but something the British of 1918 would not have believed and would not have been able to admit to themselves. Even in the 1930s British writers like Edgar Wallace could pen colonialist fantasies about moral British Africa Hands who would never dream of engaging in the sort of behavior Peters did.

From a British paper, reprinted in the Straits Times of Singapore, 21 September 1932:

IMPRISONMENT FOR “SUN GOD”
Remarkable Career
Pushed Policewoman Into Water

Described by the defence as a “sunbathing enthusiast,” and known to his followers as the “Sun God,” a man who pushed a policewoman into the Serpentine was sent to gaol by Mr. Mead, the Marlborough Street magistrate.

Incidents that occurred on the bank of the famous stretch of water in Hyde Park were referred to in court, it being revealed that accused, prior to the offence with which he was charged, had threatened the officer with a ducking if children were not allowed to bathe in a prohibited area.

In the course of a remarkable career the man, who looked like a bronzed giant in the dock, has held scholastic positions in South Africa and England, and rose to the rank of captain in the War.

He has often been in connict [sic] with the authorities in the course of campaigns advocating sun-bathing, and was once evicted from a piece of land where he built a hut to practise the cult.

Over six feet in height with his skin bronzed to a deep copper hue through continual exposure to the sun, Harold Hubert Vincent, 51, described as an engineer, of Edgware Road, W., who was accused of obstructing Policewoman Annie Matthews, assaulting her, and damaging her uniform, presented a striking appearance in the dock at Marlborough Street. He wore a tennis shirt open at the neck, grey flannel trousers, and canvas shoes with no socks.

Vincent, who was educated in South Africa, has had a remarkable career. After taking a degree in science and arts, he became a teacher at a native school, but soon resigned this position. In his early teens he enlisted in the South African Constabulary, as a trooper, and when the Boer War broke out volunteered for active service, taking part in the relief of Ladysmith.

After that war he returned to police duty, and it was he who arrested Gandhi and sent him to gaol at Durban. He next worked as an engineer in connection with gold mines in Rhodesia, and subsequently came to England.

Served As Transport Officer

During the Great War he served as a transport officer, holding the rank of captain, in France. After Vincent had been found guilty of the offence with which he was now charged and senteneced to three months in the second division, several convictions were proved against him, a police officer stating that none of them was for a similar offence. Some of the offences were for “indecency” connected with sun-bathing.

Vincent has been an advocate of sun-bathing for many years, and has founded a number of organisations. He is known to his followers as the “Sun God.” His activities in Hyde Park brought him into conflict with the police, and, indignant at what he deemed to be injustice, he once visited the House of Commons, and from the Strangers’ Gallery threw a bundle of documents to the floor of a startled House.

Abandoning Hyde Park, Vincent next moved to Hendon, where he built a hut on a piece of derelict land. This he considered as “No Man’s Land,” but the authorities had him removed and the hut demolished.

[the rest of the article is just testimony from the trial].

I’m including this here because Vincent is in many ways a real-life Ubermensch, but he chose a decidedly unusual route to go. A player’s Ubermensch can go in any direction they want it to go, not just the usual crime-fighting route.

A sketch of the dining room and a photograph of the undercarriage walkway of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin.

From the evening edition of the Altoona Mirror, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 1927:

REPORT: GIANT GORILLA SEEN IN ADAMS COUNTY.

GETTYSBURG, Feb. 2.—Adams county has an animal scare to worry its residents today.

Motorists arriving here from the western part of the county have reported seeing a giant gorilla along the roadside.

It was reported that the animal leaped over the top of one machine as the car crossed a bridge.

The motorists believe the animal is hiding in the forest on the sides of Jacks Mountain.

From the Straits Times of Singapore, 9 January 1939.

Female Indian cops active on the verge of WW2. Which means Indian policewomen active during World War Two, fighting German and Japanese spies and doing all the other pulpy things.

From the Winnipeg edition of the Voröld of Reykjavik, Iceland, from 2 December, 1919.

Private detectives on the mean streets of Reykjavik! You can play that hard-boiled detective of yours, sure—but she or he can be from anywhere.